Question #4: is Belief in God Rational?

But before we get into this question, let us be sure we know what we are about. We are attempting to attribute a property (that of rationality; or else, irrationality) to a particular idea (the belief in God). In this we have two qualify two things: what rationality is, and what a belief in God is.

Beginning with the first inquiry, we must look at this property of rationality.

Random House Dictionary provides us with the following:

ra⋅tion⋅al

-adjective.
1. Agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development.2. Having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm and rational negotiator.
3. Being in or characterized by full possession of one’s reason; sane; lucid: The patient appeared perfectly rational.

Assuming we can fairly agree on what it is to be rational, let us further define the opposite:

ir⋅ra⋅tion⋅al

-Adjective.
1. Without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason.
2. Without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.
3. Not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical; irrational arguments.
The important thing to notice here is that we are not talking about what is correct or incorrect. This dialogue, so far, has not dealt with anything like true and false statements, beliefs, or mindsets. What we are dealing with so far is whether or not something is rational or irrational; these are our only criteria.

Next, I believe we can paint a fairly accurate general picture of God without stepping on anyone’s toes:

God is the supreme being in existence, possessing an unlimited nature and the qualities of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, omnipresence, and etc. God was this being which brought all of the universe into existence, and who supposedly* sustains it.

*Understandably the nature of God’s connection with the Creation is open to speculation, and considerations on deism or other ideas are not relevant at this point.

Now, does this idea of a God fit into our previous definition of “rational”? It seems as though what we are really asking is whether or not it is rational to assume that there may exist a being with these attributes.

God as the Prime Mover

Let us asses the second part of the claim about God first: that He is the source of all matter and energy in the universe. This, however, implies that the universe has a cause, and to this one may offer the Big Bang theory as evidence.

For those unfamiliar, several discoveries about the nature of the universe have pointed in this direction. Vesto Slipher observed the first Doppler Shift in the Universe in 1912, hinting that the universe was in motion. Twelve years later, Hubble worked on Slipher’s data and was able to measure the redshifts, and since that time, much other speculation and theory was developed, all pointing to the idea that the universe as we know it originated from a single point, called the point of singularity, and that the causal chain of the universe traced backwards to this point. This data, in total, suggests that the universe had a beginning, and therefore, required a cause. However, the nature of this cause had to be something beyond both space and time, since the two things were not in existence yet prior to the Big Bang.

Given the necessity for a cause of the universe, we must look towards a causal power which is beyond space and time, and this theory of God fits the bill nicely: He is considered to be of infinite nature, beyond both time and space, and the varying manifestations of the Cosmological Argument all take advantage of this fact to place God as the “Prime Mover”, or causal source of the universe.

These two theories, one philosophical, the other scientific, seem very much rationally in accordance with one another.

God’s Attributes

The second part of our definition attributes several fantastical abilities to this being we call God: things like being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. How rational is this possibility? Well, first, what prevents someone from being everywhere, or knowing everything? Simple space-time limitations: a man cannot be in every place at once because it takes time for him to get there, and because, by nature, a physical body cannot occupy more than one space at a time. But these restrictions are not applicable to a being which is beyond space and time, and the same is true for all the other omni-attributes. Freed from the constraints of space and time, a being would be free to do anything and have (perceivable) unlimited power over beings who were confined by time and space. This is a natural assumption to make, given what we have previously agreed to.

QED

Are we in a position to say that God is in fact the causal source of the universe as we know it? Perhaps, but not quite yet. We certainly have developed rational ground for two of God’s primary attributes, as we listed above. How true they are is not the subject of our discussion, but only if they are reasonable in nature.

Whether or not the nature of the Prime Universal Cause must necessarily line up with the Christian God, or a personal God, or an absolute consciousness itself is the topic for another day.

However, as it stands now, and given our previous definitions of rational or irrational, it would appear that we can squarely place God into the first category, and not the latter, as what we have discussed so far (though briefly) show that a being with the given attributes need not be unreasonable at all, but rather fits in accordance with what we know about the universe so far.